Posts by Doctor Syntax

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Does the light really go off when you close the lid?

At least she realised that whatever she tried prices on eBay only went up.

Welcome to the topsy turvy world of social networking and data privacy.

Anna regrets trying draw a structure diagram of systemd.

Why do they call it a laptop when it won't stay on my lap?

I still can't make head nor tail of the new start menu.

Are you sure I'm watching it wrong?

"hinged around a large ear growing out of a tree behind the two VR viewers."

You didn't notice the two others?( Forearm of one of the viewers & tree in the distance on the RHS).

Germany says Ja to data-slurp law 2.0

Re: @Doctor Syntax

Sorry about that but have an upvote for being a gentleman of great intelligence.

"must get a judge's consent"

HMG please note.

Ad networks promise to do something about the awful adverts you're all blocking, like, real soon

Re: "Marketing managers are, to the last man (or woman) a bunch of wankers."

"Microsoft could save money if they stopped messing around with multiple more or less crippled versions of their OS."

It looks as if that's what they're trying to do but not successfully. Beancounters say to board "it'll be cheaper to force everyone onto the same version". Board says to marketing & tech "can we do that". M & T say "sure" - they're not going to risk saying anything else. Everybody wanders out of the meeting with tech muttering between themselves "HTF do we do that?".

"its about brand recognition"

That works two ways. If I recognise a brand because it tries to poke its fingers in my eyeballs and eardrums I will avoid it like the plague.

Re: "Marketing managers are, to the last man (or woman) a bunch of wankers."

@ Arnaut the less

I'm in agreement about the distinction. As far as W10 goes it might have been beancounters who realised that if they could save money supporting multiple versions if they could cram everyone onto one.

The profiling of print media could be applied equally well to web sites. In fact it could be applied better in real time by picking up on the subject of the page. If I search for vacuum cleaners and later visit a gardening site it would make a good deal more sense to show me gardening related ads at that time rather than vacuum cleaner ads. And if I'm looking at pages about greenhouses ads for fruit trees might not be the best choice of gardening ad.

"A new framework and a new format, designed by the people who couldn't even use the existing frameworks in a secure way? What could possibly go wrong?"

I'm prepared to believe that they could manage to do it now they've cottoned onto the fact that they have to. OTOH I'll let others turn off their adblockers first & see what happens.

"crap you would wipe with if it was on real paper"

Somehow I don't think your metaphor works. But have an upvote anyway.

@dan80

I agree with you but the paragraphs at the tail of the article suggests that the weasels will try to continue as before:

'Cunningham did note that the "lean" initiative would not be aimed at replacing all online ads, and in some cases "lean" ads would be able to run alongside other formats.

"Publishers should have the opportunity to provide rich advertising experiences, LEAN advertising experiences, and subscription services," he said. "Or publishers can simply deny their service to users who choose to keep on blocking ads."'

It will need ad networks that only serve LEAN ads and ad blockers that block everything else to make this work. Publishers and advertisers alike need to learn one simple fact:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A RICH ADVERTISING EXPERIENCE.

"Ads HAVE TO track you in order for the operator of the Ad network to get credit for generating sales. If they have no metrics for determining if their marketing is effective, they get less money for that advertising."

But presumably there would be a trail leading from a click on the ad to a sale. And that's all the ad agency needs to continuing selling snake-oil to their victimsclients. Any proper feedback, say a button labelled "Never show me any more crap from these weasels", would be excessive.

"We were so clever and so good at it"

More like so stupid and so full of their own importance. They've brought this on themselves. Ad blockers are now no longer a matter of removing annoyances; thanks to the malvertising that that stupid & self-important industry has allowed to develop ad blockers are simply part of internet users' security set-up alongside anti-virus and firewalls.

Wheels come off parents' plan to dub sprog 'Mini Cooper'

Re: Kanye West's son is called North.

If he also names his son North will that be North by North West?

It's surprising how stuff can escape your attention. After carefully selecting a couple of attractive names for our daughter we never cottoned onto the significance of the initials until they caused a certain amount of confusion about her status when she was a post-grad. It's all resolved now as she's Dr DR ...

I've always thought that providing the parents were wealthy enough this was a good ploy. Child grows up, successfully sues parents, cash passes from one generation to the next without a tax liability.

Microsoft now awfully pushy with Windows 10 on Win 7, 8 PCs – Reg readers hit back

Re: Linux Mint

"In WINE, Winamp can't see my CD drive, so I can't rip CDs with it, which I do need as it's got a reliable ripper that I like."

No shortage of rippers for Linux.

"Insert obligatory comment about using Linux here"

What you need to notice is that most of the people doing so have been long time Windows enthusiasts. What does that tell you?

Re: Probably laziness on my part ..

" I upgraded my dual-boot Windows 8.1 / Linux Mint laptop to Windows 10 / Linux Mint. Everything worked fine for several weeks and I could boot into either OS as required via the grub menu. ...Windows 10 did several automatic updates and destroyed the dual-boot, making it Windows 10 only."

Probably the original update was at fault as it seems to have failed Windows SOP.

Re: Probably laziness on my part ..

" I find my Debian box is a little cranky about automounting DVDs and USBs."

Currently running Wheezy (& no plans to go further) and that doesn't seem to have problems. ISTR problems with earlier versions however. It might vary with desktop - I'm running KDE.

"it will multiply out"

Quite so. The posts that say we're not the target markets (maybe that should be marks?) have missed the point. We're the ones who are advising others. Friends and family who come looking for help with their W10s aren't going to get it, they're going to be directed to alternative OSes.

It's noticeable that many posts on this sort of thread are from people who say they've been MS supporters from way back and who are now changing their minds. MS really have misjudged badly to alienate so many supporters.

"And so was..... "

FORTRAN for CP/M

Virgin Media filters are still eating our email – Ntlworlders

Re: ISP email?

"[e-mail]"

There's also the secret little pleasure of knowing all their spam will bounce.

Re: Yeah, right...

"I somehow seriously doubt the truthfulness of that statement"

Why? It's quite feasible that large scale companies such as banks would have large numbers with a given provider.

Re: ISP email?

" I've had the damn email address from the ISP for 15 years"

Does that mean you've never needed to change ISP (in which case you're lucky) or because the grief of changing email address is too great to contemplate changing ISP - however bad they are?

"We appreciate the frustration this causes our customers and thank them for their patience,”

Translation: "we seem to be getting away with doing nothing".

Why should they bother to do anything if their customers are gormless* enough not to get another email service?

*With a nod to the thread on Lester's article.

HMRC U-turns on VAT rules for cloud

"Hardware purchases are not subject to the refund, unless they are provided as part of a managed service."

So any public sector entity competent enough to roll its own gets penalised for not pouring some of its funding into a service provider's profits. In turn that means that there's no incentive for such entities to maintain their own competence. And we wonder why the public sector regularly gets taken to the cleaners by service providers.

Nippy, palaver and cockwomble: Greatest words in English?

"Any why is discontent harboured in a hotbed"

That one's easy. Hotbed is a gardening term. It describes an arrangement for enabling things to grow more vigorously than they might do otherwise. Some managements are quite good at achieving this with discontent.

No change in US law, no data transfer deals – German state DPA

Re: Change yes but not for the average joe.

Your question has already been answered in relation to a different question. The EU citizen does business with an EU company. That EU company has responsibilities under the relevant data protection legislation. If they fail in that responsibility by passing on the data by the routes you suggest they are liable to the citizen and if they haven't arranged indemnity from their business partner then more fool them.

Re: A chilling side-effect...

"Given the combative nature of politicos here in the States, I suspect they'll just create a similar law here that US data has to stay in the US which also prevents business being conducted."

A US govt passing laws to prevent business? That seems unlikely.

Re: Global USA Megacorps

"They will just offshore all their data to Iceland, Ireland, Iberia, Italy etc"

When they've done spluttering with rage this is exactly what they'll do. But they'll have to do it carefully by setting up locally owned & managed franchise operations or maybe some other form of outsourcing to take care of any possibility that the MS case could go the wrong way.

Re: Let me get this straight

"No one forced you to create a Facebook/Google/Microsoft account."

I don't have a Facebook or Google account nor a Twitter account for that matter. I have a Hotmail account that I use as a spambin. If the NSA or anyone else wants what's in that they're welcome. My main email traffic is based on my private domain which is now hosted by a UK company. So as regards those I have no skin in the game.

What I do object to is that as a customer of EU companies that they have been using some US-based services and exporting my data, which they're supposed to treat according to EU-specific rules, to a country where there's no way of ensuring those rules can be followed.

That's the issue as far as I'm concerned.

Dell buying EMC: Is this the end times, or the road to salvation?

"There are a limited number of shareholders, and they all know each other."

It might be reasonable to assume they'd agreed a strategy beforehand.

Bloke cuffed, accused of polishing off £700k Polish bank cyber-heist

Trying to shoot the messenger

Always such a successful tactic.

Google, Facebook, Microsoft and buddies stick a bomb under hated CISA cyber-law

"Even if you do managed to bring some kind of lawsuit, if you win you just get your own tax dollars back."

Not quite. If I managed to bring some kind of lawsuit I'd get your tax dollars back. I don't have any tax dollars to pay, just pounds.

Let's check out Dell, doom and the competition

Re: How can one article get so much wrong?!

"t's simply irrelevant to me because all I care about is the service that I'm consuming not the underlying nuts and bolts."

If you're in the EU you'd better start caring about who supplies the service & where it lives.

Junk your IT. Now. Before it drags you under

Legacy

It seems a few people need to remember what a legacy is. If your old aunt dies and leaves you a legacy of, say, £10,000 are you going to turn it down because it's, like, old?

And in terms of IT that legacy system which has been ticking away for however many years supporting profitable business is helping to pay your salary.

Re: Disruption

27escape, I think you need to ask someone in your IT department to explain why you don't need to press return at the end of every line.

Dry those eyes, ad blockers are unlikely to kill the internet

Re: Not entirely convinced by the postulate

"Probably because it's so small."

The whole advertising industry is based on this assumption. But I doubt they'll take the trouble to check on it. Much too dangerous.

" Those cookies that track you from site to site allow advertisers to know, for each particular ad, how many people clicked on it, and from those, how many people purchased anything."

You're missing the point (apart from the fact that I'll never even see the ad).

The point is that such metrics only tell them how many positive responses they get. They don't know the effect on all those who didn't click - whether they just ignore the add or take note and decide NEVER TO BUY ANYTHING WHATSOEVER FROM THOSE WEASELS THIS SIDE OF THE HEAT DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE.

Re: At the moment we hve digital TV

"That is: 7to 10 channels showing 5 minute slots of painful adverts between 15 minute slots of John Wayne and Robert Mitchum films and Time-Team extravaganzas"

No problem. Everything goes onto the Myth box & the ads get FF at x60.

Re: @werdsmith - People who use adblockers...

"So be charitable, take the leaflet and drop it in your recycling"

Why should I have to dispose of other people's junk? Ultimately this must cost the local authorities - I doubt mine has the acumen to run recycling at a profit - so we're all expected to pay for crap we don't want.

Re: @werdsmith - People who use adblockers...

"I guess they are generally honest people"

And the ones who stick leaflets under windscreen wipers as well?

Re: @werdsmith - People who use adblockers...

"just about to push a leaflet through"

Years and years ago Belfast was a haven for various denominations handing out religious tracts - it may be yet for all I know. One day someone managed to hand me one - I mustn't have been paying enough attention. Just round the corner another of these nuts came up to try to hand me another. So I held out the one I'd just been given. He blinked a bit but took it. It's nice to get one over on these types now & again.